Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: rushed
  • Music: Counting Crows, 'Accidentally In Love.'

Working hard vs. hardly working: where my word counts went.

So I haven't been posting many word counts recently -- not, as one person jokingly asked, because I've given up writing in favor of playing Kingdom Hearts for the fifteenth time, but because I've entered one of those phases where the word counts are somewhat less quantifiable. If I start out with a file containing 50,000 words, and finish with a file containing 51,000 words, I've clearly written 1,000 words, right? Well, what if, in the process of working that day, I deleted an entire chapter, replaced it with a new chapter, and rewrote three fight sequences? I actually wrote 11,000 words. My net gain, however, is 1,000. And how do you measure revisions? Sometimes I'll spend six hours of quality time with a manuscript and a machete, and come away bleeding, grinning, and down a couple of thousand words. Negative word counts seem a little silly in that situation. I wind up just waving my hands around in the air and saying, blankly, 'lots.'

I've actually been busting ass around here lately. Discount Armageddon got a whole new first chapter, as did Late Eclipses of the Sun; in the case of Discount Armageddon, the original first chapter stayed on as the new second chapter, but in the case of Late Eclipses, well...kill your darlings. I've said it often enough that I really do need to learn how to live by it. I've also done some serious restructuring on the rest of Discount Armageddon, making it tighter, leaner, and much more prepared to dance the samba all over whatever happens to get in its way.

Late Eclipses is going through a similar, but much more dramatic, series of restructurings; several large swaths of the book are being tossed out the window and completely rewritten, including, so far, the original chapters one and two. (One of the other things I say way too often to plead ignorance: the author can be wrong, and that's what rewrites are for.) The story is still essentially the same, it's just getting tighter and more directed in the things that it's saying. That, and I'm slaughtering a lot of wishy-washy modifiers. They're like kittens -- one is awesome, thirty is a crazy cat lady.

I'm just about finished working on Discount Armageddon for a little while, since it's a busy book with places to go and people to see. This is going to mean the return of the word counts for The Mourning Edition, as I get back to work on my favorite zombie universe, and probably the beginning of the editorial revisions on An Artificial Night.

In short, even when it looks like I'm goofing off and having fun with art supplies, I'm working too much to sleep.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.
Tags: an artificial night, being productive, busy busy busy, discount armageddon, editing, late eclipses, proofreading, writing
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  • 6 comments
...go 1 level up... Expand

seanan_mcguire

January 29 2009, 15:32:52 UTC 8 years ago

Oh, that's a fantastic idea. I think it would make me crazy, but I can totally see the utility.

kathleenfoucart

January 29 2009, 15:48:00 UTC 8 years ago

If I'm going fast it can get annoying, and I'm sure I forget sometimes, but it's become second nature to click over to the other color.

seanan_mcguire

January 29 2009, 15:49:27 UTC 8 years ago

The things that become second nature for us are strange. I know people who find my habit of totally retyping whatever I'm revising seriously weird, but it's what works for me.

kathleenfoucart

January 29 2009, 16:17:27 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah, I can see how that would make changing colors harder! I do that sometimes, too, when I can't get my head into the revision. Helps me reconnect with what I've written.

seanan_mcguire

January 30 2009, 16:17:44 UTC 8 years ago

I think it's because I started out as a typewriter girl.